"In today's world, security is about
people." This banner flies above the NEW STRATEGIC
SECURITY INITIATIVE in Washington, DC
Director of this new conversation is Dr. Lorelei Kelly
( LoreleiKelly@gmail.com ), veteran of Capitol Hill and Washington think tanks,
and past Policy Director, Real Security Initiative -- responding to
over-reliance on military solutions.

Examples of these security-minded people and
their citizen-driven, face-to-face Middle East public peace process are
becoming hard news. Beyond "nice" or "symbolic,"
their wall-lowering, confidence-building personal encounters are increasingly
becoming the substance of sustainable coexistence and creativity together.READ last week's cover story of The Jerusalem
Post - Jerusalem Section. Journalist Lauren Gelfond Feldinger (
LGelfond@zahav.net.il ) is the Middle East's finest for finding and investigating
leading-edge stories of successful human relationships that make war
increasingly unnecessary, obsolete.

The headline from The Jerusalem Post print edition is
followed by profiles of Arab and Jewish courage of Leah Lublin (
LLublin@netvision.net.il ), Abed Eriqat, and others.

Their Abu Dis- Ma'aleh
Adumim interfaith encounter is one of 31 groups of the Interfaith Encounter
Association - http://www.interfaith-encounter.org/
.
Step by step.
Learning together.
Seeing life and each other anew.
Performing civic, civil leadership at the highest.
Always together.

Settling DifferencesFor the First time,
Israelis and Palestinians in
neighboring West Bank communities are meeting on a regular basis.
They talk about religion, but politics are never far afield.by Lauren Gelfond Feldinger

At least once a month, Palestinian lawyer
Abed Eriqat, 29, passes through the one exit out of Abu Dis where there is no
security barrier, gritting his teeth at the soldiers manning the checkpoint on
the road where most of his life he had traveled freely to neighboring
Jerusalem.
To help him get through the wait and then
interrogation, moments that he describes as the most humiliating and hopeless
of his life, he sometimes uses an unusual tactic: remembering meetings with
Israelis, even settlers, as a source of hope.
"I still think it's an international crime that
Israel settles the West Bank. But I'll meet a settler as a neighbor. It's an
opportunity to expand my point of view and to help Israelis understand how I
think."
In search of Israelis for dialogue, Eriqat posted an
ad on the list server of Israel's Bohemian Mideast Rainbow gatherings list last
year. "I wanted to see which Israelis are really interested to know and
commit to speaking to a Palestinian. If you believe in peace, why not speak
with Palestinians about everything, to know the two sides of the story?"
As the days and weeks passed, only one Israeli would
respond - a woman in next-door Ma'aleh Adumim.
As Eriqat clicked open this e-mail, his eyes widened.
"You are living on my land," he muttered to himself.
While Ma'aleh Adumim is generally described by
Israelis as a suburb of Jerusalem built on unpopulated lands that in biblical
times stretched between the Judah and Benjamin tribes, Israel's largest Jewish
settlement in the West Bank is considered by many Abu Dis residents as stolen
Palestinian land that would have been used for their own community's natural
growth.
But the next week, Eriqat traveled through the
checkpoint and made his way from east to west Jerusalem to meet Leah Lublin,
"the settler."

PALESTINIANS often tell Lublin, 53, that they cannot
have normalization with settlers. Eriqat, too, rushed to tell her the same at
their first meeting.
"I'm not a settler," she explains. "I
don't consider myself Left or Right. I'm apolitical. I'm just someone who wants
to live in peace in the country that I love. I moved to Ma'aleh Adumim to be
close to my ailing father."
In the mid- and late 1990s, though, Lublin did go to
gatherings of Kach, a movement now outlawed by Israel as a Jewish terror
organization. "I was a militant right-winger; I hated Palestinians because
I didn't know them and I feared them," she says.
But in the gatherings, Lublin and her husband found
that they could not find common ground with Kach members: "It was negative
energy. We didn't fit in."
By 2001, Lublin fell into a state of despair.
"The intifada was a very dark period. My kids were traveling on buses. We
were calling each other all the time after suicide bombings. My teenage
daughter had a boyfriend who was killed. My second daughter had a youth
counselor who was also killed. It was really painful. The suicide bombers would
do their thing; then we were dishing it back, pounding their communities, and I
didn't see any end in sight or that any of these solutions were going to
work."
In 2002, as she was flipping through The Jerusalem
Post, an article about the Interfaith Encounter Association caught her eye, and
in a moment of impulse she picked up the phone to call its director, Yehuda
Stolov. A modern Orthodox Jew who founded the IEA's dialogue groups shortly after
the second intifada broke out in 2001, Stolov traces his non-political,
interfaith relations-building approach to Jewish sources: Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak
Hakohen Kook's teachings about universalism and the teachings of the Merkaz
Harav Yeshiva, where he studied for six years. He also told Lublin about
research in recent years, such as that of Dr. Ben Mollov of Bar-Ilan
University, which found that non-political interfaith meetings, where people
get to know each other, help lessen prejudice and the risk of participating in
or supporting violence towards "the other."
Inspired by her conversations with Stolov, Lublin
headed out that weekend to the Tantur Ecumenical Institute on the border
between Jerusalem and Bethlehem for her first interfaith retreat run by IEA.
"I went with all these preconceived notions of Palestinians. Seeing 25
young Arabs, I thought, 'Oh no, they are going to blow the place up or follow
me home and stab me,'" she says.
"Up until that point, I had thought that we Jews
were the only victims; but that weekend, I realized they were also victims,
that many innocent Palestinians were also killed in this conflict, and that we
were both in pain. That weekend I also got friendly with an artist from
Ramallah. He picked up a fistful of soil and ran it through his fingers, saying
'I love this land.' And I said, 'You know, I love it, too.' It was a wonderful
revelation that they could love this land as much as we do and that they are
going to stay, and we are going to have to find a way to live together and to
get over the fear of each other," she says.
"When [the Palestinians] left [the retreat] they
told us, 'Don't take buses.' I said Tfilat Haderech [the traveler's prayer] for
them. I was [no longer] just worried about Jews - I also started worrying about
them every time the IDF went into Nablus. We had become compassionate toward
each other."
After that, Lublin began attending any interfaith
events that were not political. "When I went once to a left-wing meeting,
I found it angry and insular; the political arena is not for me. These
[interfaith] meetings are happy gatherings. When I see Muslims, Christians and
Jews studying religious texts together or socializing together, I feel this is
the kind of world I'd like to help create for my children and grandchildren,
where there's tolerance and respect for one another. I believe that if a lot of
people get involved [in dialogue], the politics will simply fall into
place."
Lublin told her friends about her new-found beliefs and
activities. "They were shocked," she says. "Some said 'Don't
tell me' or 'Grassroots movements won't help.' One couple stopped inviting us
to their home."
Six years after becoming the coordinator of the IEA's
interfaith groups in Jerusalem, she thought to herself: "I can do more; we
are preaching to the converted."
So when she saw Eriqat's note on the Rainbow list, she
rushed to respond.
At the YMCA in Jerusalem, Lublin and Eriqat sat over
coffee and chatted about family, work and life in their communities. And when
Lublin suggested they start a group from neighboring Palestinian Abu Dis and
Israeli Ma'aleh Adumim to study common themes in Islam and Judaism under the
umbrella of the IEA, Eriqat was surprised.
"Religion?" he said. "It seems to be
what divides us."

ERIQAT SOON opened up to the idea of gatherings that
weren't political or exclusively social; and he and Lublin joked that meetings
where Jews made chicken soup for Palestinians and Palestinians made knafe
pastry for Israelis could not be the end goal.
Though the IEA was having 4,000 participants a year
meeting for non-political interfaith dialogue, despite incursions or terror
attacks, this would be the first group where Palestinians and Israelis from
neighboring Muslim and Jewish communities in the West Bank would meet on a
regular basis.
Eriqat's openness was an unusual result of the
Palestinian uprising. His father, appointed in the early 1990s by Yasser Arafat
as chief assistant of east Jerusalem governance, was a leader in the local
Fatah movement and had been jailed two times by Israel because of his Fatah
ties. The younger Eriqat, as a child, threw rocks as a symbol of resistance
against occupation. Arabic-language TV stations in Israel and the West Bank
would interview his 12-year-old sister as the youngest Palestinian jailed for
throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers, he says.
Eriqat's father, a couple of years after being
released from prison, where he learned Hebrew, decided to try a new tactic. He
signed his son up for a Seeds of Peace summer camp in the US, shocking family
and friends. "My mother cried. I said no, I was afraid," explained
the younger Eriqat. The family thought it was a big mistake. Not one of his
friends encouraged him. "But my father said, 'You will find Abed [Eriqat]
a new man afterwards, and I want to invest in the peace process.'"
Since his camp days as a teen, Eriqat has indeed
joined and sponsored dozens of events with Israeli groups. Last year he
launched an organization that introduces Palestinians to meditation as a tool
to "make peace internally and circulate this [peace] into Palestine,"
he says, calling these his new tools of resistance.
But this would be his first interfaith venture with
Jews that would focus exclusively on religion and exclude politics. And unlike
meetings with Peace Now and other left-wing Jewish activists, the Israeli Jews
he would meet through the IEA have diverse political affiliations and are
primarily religious. He also considered them settlers.
Convincing the neighbors on both sides of the
checkpoint to participate in such a meeting continues to be a challenge.
Through Israeli eyes, Abu Dis is generally considered
a hotbed for extremists. Three suicide bombers during the intifada came from
the village, and Al-Quds University was known for supporting groups affiliated
with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The campus was also home to the Abu-Jihad Museum
honoring Palestinian "martyrs" and had just celebrated a week-long event
honoring the life of the late Palestinian engineer of the suicide bomb, Yahya
Ayyash.
So when Lublin told her neighbors and posted an ad
repeatedly on a local e-mail site inviting Ma'aleh Adumim residents to her home
for meetings with Abu Dis residents, four people did sign on. But reaction from
most went from cool to hostile.
Nearly a dozen e-mails from Ma'aleh Adumim residents
over the first months accused her of ruining the neighborhood or opening it up
to terror. Though it has been mostly quiet in the last months, Lublin still
occasionally hears an antagonistic remark.
A short drive away into Palestinian territory, Eriqat
also suffers the searing looks of some neighbors. The building and expansion of
Ma'aleh Adumim, including the accompanying checkpoints, security barrier route
and the stalled E-1 plan, infuriate Palestinians, who argue that building in
occupied territory under Israeli rule not only breaks international and Israeli
law and agreements but also interferes with Palestinian freedom of movement,
civil rights, natural growth and plans to build a Palestinian state on
contiguous land in the West Bank.
Yet some of Eriqat's neighbors, like him, were
curious.

"SO CRAZY. So weird. So scary," were the
first thoughts of Majdi Abed, 33, when, as a physics major at Al-Quds
University in Abu Dis last year, he heard about the interfaith meetings in
Ma'aleh Adumim.
"'In a settlement?' I thought. Settlers are so
extreme in their thoughts, even in their actions. And you need a permit [from
Israel] to travel each time, and the checkpoints are so scary. The whole thing
makes me go crazy and feel so scared, so bad," he says. "But I said
yes - to see the place, to see what kind of people live there. What do they
believe? What do they believe about us?"
Some of Abed's friends in Jenin, where he was born and
now teaches general science, were also potentially interested in the idea of
meeting Jews and discussing each other's religion in an intimate, home
environment. But, he says, "They all refuse the meeting place, Ma'aleh
Adumim - a settlement."
Abed and Eriqat's first meeting with MA residents was
at a Hanukka party at Lublin's home, replete with traditional holiday jelly
doughnuts, potato latkes, candle-lighting, songs, and stories about the miracle
of the oil and the ancient Jewish Maccabees who resisted the Greek Hellenists
who tried to convert them.
"Hanukka was so wonderful. It was the first time
I was invited as a human being - not a worker - into a Jewish home," says
Abed. "It was very intimate. Everyone was very friendly. Even the cakes
were so wonderful."
In the following months as the group was formally
established, they were able to gather a small group of Israelis and
Palestinians to join meetings for celebrating Jewish and Muslim holidays and
discussing topics such as women's roles in religion, religious sects, war,
prayer, rituals and ethics in the respective religions.
Abed, who now drives three hours each way when he can
for meetings, had worked with Jews in the past but had little knowledge of
their traditions and beliefs, he says. "Such meetings give a precious
cultural, political and historical understanding to the nature of the conflict.
It also empowers my knowledge of Islam and helps us introduce Islam to other
nations and wipe out bad stereotypes of Islam."
Are Jewish stereotypes also changed?
"Exactly," he replies. "When you hear about [Jewish] history,
culture and religion from [Jewish people] themselves, it leads to understanding
about a lot of things - like how they feel about the Holy Land."
"Abed is a teacher and he is so special,"
says Lublin. "I can imagine that in his own casual way, he will teach his
children and students not to hate."
Still, the Palestinians face hurdles and, sometimes,
mixed emotions.

TO CROSS the border between the Palestinian West Bank,
under Palestinian civil rule, and the Jewish West Bank, under Israeli civil and
military rule, Palestinians must get permits from the IDF to enter Israel. The
process of applying two weeks in advance of each meeting includes taking time
off work during business hours to pick the permits up at the IDF's District
Coordinating Office and waiting sometimes up to a full workday for them to be
turned over, the participants say. Sometimes permits are denied without
explanation.
For those times when the Palestinians receive approval
and the permits are issued as planned, they also worry about being interrogated
at the checkpoint at the entrance to Ma'aleh Adumim by security guards,
surprised to see a group of Palestinians who are not day laborers.
"The police sometimes call me [from the
entrance]," says Lublin. "They ask, 'Did you invite these people?
What are their names?' I told the head of security once, 'Why don't you come on
over and check us out? We are studying the Torah and the Koran together.'"
The experiences of getting permits and going through
checkpoints, coupled with memories of the intifadas, where his family home was
twice destroyed by the IDF and classmates killed, says Abed, creates a painful
contradiction for him. "It's an eternal, complicated feeling of pain, with
contradictions inside of me, to be in my friend's house and to be in a
settlement."
Also, he adds, "I don't tell [Palestinians] where
the group meets anymore; they will have a negative impression of me."
Jewish participants struggle with their own
complications.
Of her first meetings, Esther Frumkin, 48, of Ma'aleh
Adumim, says she learned new information every time, found observing and
talking to Palestinians a new and interesting experience, and discovered that
the Palestinians also have a great love for their own religion and interest in
and respect for Judaism.
"But I also found myself disturbed because I
started to see a lot of things, like news items, in a new light once I
personally knew people who were affected by those events. I couldn't stay as
detached," she says. "I have told my family. But they are all
skeptical, including my children. I was surprised and distressed to see how
much anti-Arab feeling they have unconsciously absorbed from their environment.
I don't tell a lot of people that I go to the meetings. I guess I feel
embarrassed, and I don't want to draw any attacks from people who don't
approve."

SITTING IN the Aroma Cafe on Mount Scopus in a pressed
Oxford shirt after the first dozen or so interfaith meetings in Ma'aleh Adumim,
Eriqat pauses and plays with his silver wedding band when asked about
normalization with Israelis.
"I have family and friends who are not satisfied
with my work. They call me 'normalization man.' Sometimes this makes me angry.
This stereotype could have destroyed my relations with my wife. People were
telling her that I 'work with the enemy.'"
Eriqat's picture was once plastered across the Al-Quds
University campus, charging: "Israelis kill Palestinians, and Palestinians
shake hands with Israelis" after he arranged a dialogue between Al-Quds
University and Tel Aviv University students, he says.
"It was very hard. The posters were everywhere. I
was scared. I picked up the phone and called [Al-Quds University president]
Sari Nusseibeh. He said, 'If you do not believe in what you do, then stop your
project. If you do believe, then continue on in what you believe.'"
Nusseibeh's practical advice helped refocus his
commitment, Eriqat says. "After that, I started many new projects. But I
also made some enemies."
Enemies notwithstanding and despite the mixed feelings
he has about crossing the checkpoint to spend time in a Jewish settlement, his
relations with the Jews he met at the Ma'aleh Adumim interfaith meetings are so
strong that he invited them to his wedding earlier this year.
The former Palestinian intifada activist who once
threw rocks and the former right-wing militant describe each other as the
dearest of friends.
Beyond the surprising friendships Eriqat has
discovered, he sees the meetings as a real source for change.
"[In Ma'aleh Adumim] I feel hopeful; I see it as
an opportunity," he says. "I want to show that Palestinians are
regular people, nice people, and not terrorists. I want to show Israelis how
the checkpoints, the wall and occupation influence us, because the media does
not show this reality. When you say 'Israeli,' Palestinians think soldiers;
occupation. They don't know anything else, so how can they change their minds?
But if they could sit with an Israeli, they would change their minds 100
percent. They would be able to see an Israeli as a human being. I want
Palestinians to see that not all Israelis are enemies. And I don't want
Palestinians to be terrorists. This is a great opportunity. We forget
nationality and find many things in common," he says.
Ultimately, can such dialogues between Palestinians
and Israelis influence politics and security by influencing people to support
different ideas, different choices and different leaders?
"I hope," says Eriqat. "I hope, I hope, I
hope."